ISBN 978-1-922452-37-5
PAPERBACK
Around us beautiful things shine.
An ocean under moonlight.
Diamonds on the curve of a neck.
A lover’s eyes through candlelight.
All glints between the shadows.
We choose whether to step inside.
To meet the story.
Darkness. Sorrow. Great radiance.
Whatever lies amid the light.
We can find it.
It depends only on whether we pause
and look
beneath the shimmer.
ISBN 978-1-922527-43-1
PAPERBACK
Set on the beaches that stretch along the far north-eastern reaches of Tasmania, ‘Until The End’ is a story of the bond between two brothers that has been forged on family separation. They journey together through personal disappointment, teenage wildness, emotional struggle, and eventually the loss of the older brother’s life to suicide.
A gripping read that delves into the depths of the aftermath, the devastation that it has on the family, and the distance it takes the younger brother on his own journey.
ISBN 978-1-922527-80-6
PAPERBACK
The Portuguese Lady’s Earrings covers the rich tapestry of the de Oliveira Evora family. Their rise to power and wealth began with their role in the Portuguese Empire, the Church predominantly through Jesuits, and with military regimes. Jewish money financed the family’s business from the spice trade to trading people and ownership of sugar plantations in Brazil.
In 1940, Portugal was under the dictatorship of President Antonio de Oliveira Salazar who was ambivalent about Jewish refugees flooding Lisbon. Sitting on the Atlantic, the City on the Tagus from where explorers launched the ‘Age of Discovery’ became a perfect port to flee from the Nazis.
The Establishment de Oliveira Evora family remained well entrenched in the business community and to a lesser extent with the Salazar government. It, however, maintained a strong relationship with the country’s centuries old established, successful and integrated Jewish community.
Follow Lia Maria who entwines herself with Tascha, a Jewish architectural student from Odessa; Olga Sara, the child of Tascha and Lia Maria, who is reared by her great uncle in Sao Paulo, Brazil after her mother disappears in Madeira; and Olga Sara’s son Carlos, born out of wedlock, who is sent to boarding school in England.
The Portuguese Lady’s Earrings elaborates on the secrecy that surrounds the family’s historical relationship with the Jewish community and indeed Olga Sara’s heritage.
VIBERTO SELOCHAN moved to Australia from England. After completing a PhD at the Australian National University, he worked as an academic, intelligence analyst and an Australian diplomat. He is a business executive and entrepreneur. He published and edited books and wrote for Australian and Asian newspapers and magazines and is a public commentator. His philanthropic activities include micro finance. He lives in Melbourne.
ISBN 978-1-922527-72-1
PAPERBACK
A personal view of the impact of the 2019/20 Green Valley Bushfire on the Newnhams’ home, family, and community from inside the fire zone in Walwa, Upper Murray, Australia.
Isolated from friends and family and enmeshed in the fight to defend her family’s farm from the 2019/2020 Black Summer fires, Janice Newnham was moved to document and communicate the situation to the outside world via Facebook posts.
It started as a need to quickly reassure worried friends and family, but soon became a mental health exercise, a necessity to unload by uploading to Facebook!
This book represents the first nine weeks of an ongoing story of the impact of bushfire disaster on a small rural community and is representative of many Australian farmers and rural communities during an unprecedented bushfire season: The Black Summer.
ISBN 978-1-922890-57-3
PAPERBACK
Based on a true story, White Lies (Where there is smoke…) is set in ‘God’s Own Country’, in Walwa, Northeast Victoria.
A fiery car wreck extinguishes the life of Raymond (Dickie) White’s devoted wife and catapults him to the attention of enthusiastic police investigators and newspaper journalists and simultaneously reignites the local rumour mill.
Is he the victim of small-town gossip, ultimately hounded to death by misinterpretations of his actions? Or is he a cunning, scheming individual who manipulates situations and takes advantage of innocents to achieve his ambition of owning his own farm?
His plans unravel as his web of lies is unpicked by the persistent, dedicated investigations of police utilising innovative forensic techniques and insightful deductions. As the net closes around him, he is left with only one option for escape.
Janice Newnham is a veterinarian by profession, a farmer by passion and is easily distracted by cows, dogs, family and the environment! She is a time-poor would-be creative with ambitions to indulge in her love of writing, art, and photography to capture images and stories of her environment, family and community. Imbued with a strong community spirit, she advocates for- and supports her community by serving and supporting several community organisations. Family is her number one priority, and she is devoted to her husband, Crundle (Robert), and their growing family of two sons, Connor and Sasha, (step-) daughter Bianca and their partners and children. The Newnhams own a small piece of paradise in Walwa in the Upper Murray and breed Angus cattle.
ISBN 978-1-922452-62-7
PAPERBACK
That’s why retailing became the biggest industry globally.
Today, retailing is an industry in crisis, undergoing massive disruption from online marketplaces like Amazon and Alibaba. Asia is emerging as a retail powerhouse, yet most retailers are focused on the US, UK and Europe.
7 billion shoppers don’t see things that way, but retailers are full of doom and gloom?
What is going to happen to their industry?
Roy Tavenor asks the same question – with a bit of twist.
WTF – What’s The Future of retail.
This is a book written by a realist, rather than a futurist, and draws on nearly 50 years of experience, learning from the past, to better understand the future.
For retailers and shoppers alike, there is good news.
Retail is not dying – just changing.
ISBN 978-1-922452-65-8 PAPERBACK
John Ware, with his wife, Maria, had four children in England. He decided that he would give himself and his young family a better life. In 1841, John and his eldest three young children, Jane, James and Mary emigrated to Australia.
THEY CAME ON, ROYAL SAXON.
This book, not only describes the life of the Ware family, but how the contributed to the development of Victoria and how Victorian history developed around them. In fact, the Wares arrived in Australia so early, that it was before Victoria was even known by that name.
Melbourne was then in its infancy, and the “country all around the wildest bush, the abode of the black fellow and kangaroo.” John Batman and John Fawkner had only arrived a few years before and they and other notable figures in the history of Victoria, make an appearance in this story.
The Wares soon moved to the Western Districts pastoral region. This was a dark period of time in Victorian history with numerous aboriginal incursions and massacres. The Wares lived in the middle of this terrifying time.
John and his second wife, Sarah Dede, were married as Melbourne was gripped by gold fever. They lived on at least three farms situated in prime positions between Melbourne and the Mount Alexander goldfields.
One son and six daughters of John’s reached adulthood. Each one of them has an interesting story full of joys and trials.
John and his family worked hard to prosper and the family expanded and settled in areas right across Australia. The many hundreds of Ware descendants owe a great debt of gratitude to this pioneering family.
The book is a tribute to John Ware and his family.
Ken lives in the beautiful Mandurang valley, on the outskirts of Bendigo, with his wife, Barb. Their self-built house is mudbrick, on 1.5 hectares of land and is surrounded by trees and birds. Ken and Barb have two daughters who both have three children.
Ken commenced teaching in Broadmeadows in 1975. He is currently the senior mathematics teacher at Victory Christian College in Bendigo. When he was able to go part time a few years ago he commenced researching his family history. One day he decided that the best way to collate all of the various anecdotes and documents that he had collected was to write it in book form. Since then, documenting his and Barb’s family stories has become an obsession. As of 2021, however, he still teaches. He has tried to retire a number of times but finds that he also loves teaching, mathematics and students too much.